Cinefiles

Tools

A black dude marrying a Latina chick? Well, that's just crazy! You'd think, in this supposedly post-racial America, comedies about mixed-race couples and the culture clashes they confront within their families would not only be passé, but devoid of laughs. For the most part, Our Family Wedding is. Oh, it's got decent lines here and there, but this Guess Who's Coming to Dinner retread, directed by Rick Famuyiwa, has no originality, replacing heart and understanding with tired jokes about goats downing a few Viagra and humping Forest Whitaker. Young couple America Ferrera and Lance Gross want to get married, but dads Whitaker and — ugh — Carlos Mencia want nothing to do with that. Cue the laugh track. There is no need for Our Family Wedding to exist, unless somehow you have never seen a culture-clash comedy. —Louis Fowler

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Death Race 2000 (R) (Blu-Ray)

Shout! Factory

When originally released in 1975, Death Race 2000 starring David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone was a brutally black comedy, a satirical look at America's endless consumption of violence taken to an extreme. Thirty-five years later, in our era of reality television, overnight celebrity and bloodlust, it's scary how close we are to this movie becoming real. In the (then) future of 2000, a messiah-like president keeps society docile by instituting the Transcontinental Death Race, wherein five racers plow down pedestrians from coast to coast in souped-up, supercharged killing machines and are treated as national heroes along the way. An underground "terrorist" organization tries to subvert the Death Race and its star driver Frankenstein at every turn. So the question is: When it comes our time to applaud such brutality, which side will you be on? —Louis Fowler

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Terror Inside (NR)

Cinema Epoch

At csindy.com last week I reviewed The Crazies, where a pathogen gets into a small town's water supply, causing the denizens to become bloodthirsty killers. Now, the straight-to-DVD, low-budget Terror Inside, directed by Jozef Lenders, goes in the opposite direction. A gooey substance infects a community, turning them into goth-emo kids who mutilate themselves in the most disturbing ways, going so far as to jump into a woodchipper just to "feel" something. After discovering his fiancée cutting her toes off, a city slicker (Corey Feldman) decides to get to the bottom of the problem, which — as Feldman fans know — means it will be investigated in the most unintentionally funny way possible. (I could watch Feldman for hours.) Terror Inside is a fun, stupid movie that would go great in a double-feature with The Crazies, but to vastly different reactions. —Louis Fowler